Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date ...
1911: Homer Jones did not shoot his business partner at Taiban as authorities had alleged. Jones’ innocence was declared by Edward Gardner, the man Jones was alleged to have shot.
Police arrested Jones because his boot tracks were found near the scene of Gardner’s shooting. But when Gardner recovered from his wound enough to talk to authorities, he told them he and Jones were the best of friends and had never had a cross word. Gardner said Jones’ arrest was “an outrage,” the Roosevelt County Herald reported.
The newspaper did not identify a new suspect in the case.
1959: Sophia Loren was starring in “The Black Orchid,” playing at Clovis’ Lyceum theater.
“Bad? Sure, I’m bad,” her character said in promotional advertising.
“It takes someone bad to tell you what it’s like at the bottom of hell.”
Anthony Quinn was Loren’s co-star.
Across the street at the State theater, Audie Murphy and Sandra Dee were starring in “The Wild and the Innocent.”
“He’s twenty ... untamed by law or lady,” the promotional advertising told us.
“She’s sixteen ... and scared ... of the facts of life.
“Together ... they shared a fighting adventure as they tamed a rough new world.”
1962: Astronaut Scott Carpenter disclosed he had named the space capsule he would ride into orbit later in the month “Aurora-7,” partly because he grew up on the corner of Aurora and Seventh streets in Boulder, Colo.
One of the Navy lieutenant’s assignments on his flight was to gather clues about the luminous particles that fellow Astronaut John Glenn reported when Glenn became the first American to circle the earth in space in 1962.
“The experiment is designed to demonstrate whether or not space plays tricks on the human eye,” United Press International reported.
Carpenter identified the “fireflies” Glenn saw as particles of frozen liquid loosened from the outside of the spacecraft.
Carpenter also collected data on how liquids reacted in zero gravity and took multiple photos of the heavens, the earth and the horizon.
His three-orbit mission on May 24, 1962, lasted nearly five hours.
1963: A completely renovated youth center was open at Cannon Air Force Base, complete with a juke box, tables and chairs, a drop ceiling, and new lighting.
An open house, ribbon cutting, and dance marked the official opening of the Tactical Air Command Youth Center.
The refurbished facility included a music room with a high-fidelity phonograph, pole lamps, chairs, rugs, and plaques. There were also two game rooms, one with shuffleboard and ping pong tables, and the other with billiard tables and a bumper pool table.
1966: Duckwall’s department store was promoting its Friday the 13th sale as “Your lucky day!”
Folding camp stools were 72 cents, 50-foot garden hoses were $1.99, and 30-quart foam ice chests were 99 cents.
All the bargains required a coupon that could be clipped from the Clovis News-Journal.
1966: Clovis was preparing to host the New Mexico Young Republican State Convention.
About 250 GOP members were expected for the gathering at the Holiday Inn.
Republican candidate for governor David Cargo was among scheduled speakers. Others expected to participate were U.S. Senate candidate Anderson Carter, state Rep. Hoyt Pattison and convention coordinator Don McAlavy.
A session on “campaign techniques,” a speech by Idaho Congressman George Hansen and a dance were on the three-day agenda.
1976: A broken-down car helped law officers solve a grocery story theft in Causey.
Thieves had broken into Terral’s Grocery, taking candy and cigarettes. They left behind a trail of candy wrappers leading to an abandoned vehicle near the store.
A Roosevelt County deputy hid in a nearby barn and watched the car until two teenagers appeared and attempted to start it with jumper cables.
Officials matched the teens’ shoe prints with tracks leading away from the grocery store. They also tied the pair to a theft at Flo’s Café earlier in the month. One of the boys told police the cash register from Flo’s could be found in a nearby stock tank.
The automobile had previously belonged to Portales Police Detective Dave Griffin. He said he’d traded it in because it was hard to start.
1978: An ambitious campaign to raise money to combat birth defects was kicking off in eastern New Mexico with students from local elementary, junior high, and high schools all set to join local mothers and other volunteers in a March of Dimes Walkathon and Mother’s Day March of Dimes.
Gloria White of Clovis, chairman of the event scheduled to take place in numerous communities including Clovis, Texico, and Melrose, said volunteers would be going door to door to take pledges.
She stressed that no money would be changing hands over the weekend, but that volunteers would make follow-up visits to collect the promised donations.
Student volunteers were competing for prizes to be awarded to those who gathered the most pledges.
1987: Clovis Board of Education approved three pilot programs aimed at educating children on matters of health and sex education.
Assistant Superintendent G. C. Ross proposed the instruction, which included “education in the areas of alcohol and drug awareness and sex education, with an emphasis on AIDS,” the Clovis News-Journal reported.
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens and Betty Williamson. Contact:
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